many crashes of X server, what should I investigate?

[Mark LaPierre]

On 01/01/2013 04:42 PM, Frédéric Bron wrote:
> I run F17 with regular updates.
> I have many crashes of the X server:
> - freezing when switching between user
> - freezing when starting a session
> Many times, Ctrl+Alt+Backspace does not work, also Ctrl+Alt+F[1-9]
> does not work either so that I cannot even start a terminal session to
> see what happens. I find it difficult to justify my choice of linux
> over windows in front of the familiy...
> I would like to investigate but I do not know what to look at. Could
> you help? Are there some logs that I can look at after the crash?
>
> I used to run GDM + Gnome sessions. I changed to KDM + Kde but still
> have issues.
>
> Thanks for helping,
>
> Regards,
>
> Frédéric

Hey Frédéric,

What kind of machine are you running F17 on?  What processor?  How much 
memory?  What video card?  Do you have it overclocked?  Are you using 
the default video driver that comes with F17 or did you install the 
proprietary video driver issued by the video chip manufacturer?

There are a lot of things that can impact video system performance.

Do you have another machine networked to this machine?  If you do you 
can open a terminal session on this machine using ssh.  You might find 
some clues in dmesg

$ dmesg | tail

You want to set up and test ssh before time so that you will know that 
it works when you need it.  If your machine is hard crashing so that you 
can't log on through ssh, if the keyboard locks up so that caps lock and 
number lock don't work, then life gets more difficult when it comes time 
to diagnose lockups.

-- 
     _
    °v°
   /(_)\
    ^ ^  Mark LaPierre
Registerd Linux user No #267004
https://linuxcounter.net/
****